Three Attitudes Towards Life
As a
human being you have the choice of three basic attitudes towards life. You may
approach life with the philosophy of the vegetable, in which case your
life will consist in being born, eating, drinking, sleeping, maturing, mating,
growing old and dying. Of human vegetables there is no end, there is a calm
contentment undisturbed by the problems of this world. They require neither
books nor teaching since vegetation is the be – all and end-all of the human
vegetable’s life. The same providence, that protects puppy dogs and earth
worms, watches over their destiny and provides their simple wants in life. They
vegetate at the lowest level consistent with humanity, and as they never read
books, we need not disturb their placid existence by useless instruction in the
art of living.
The
second basic attitude is to look at life as if it were a business. A
great many so-called successful men and women believe that life is a business,
and they arrange their conduct and behavior accordingly. If you believe that
life is a business your first question of life, naturally, is “what do I get
out of it?”.
And your
first reaction to any new experience is,
“How much is this worth to me?”
In a world based on this
attitude: happiness becomes a matter of successful competition, and this is the
method of choice in the animal world. The stronger eats the weaker. The
fittest, in point of personal power, survives at the expense of the weaker.
Life becomes a matter of aggressive offence and successful defense. Every
animal shifts for himself, and living alternates between savage victory and
object defeat.
The great majority of human
beings today look at life as if it were a business. Their basic philosophy is
one of aggressive competition and personal efficiency. “Our skyscrapers, our
rush hours, our super motorcars, and our high-pressure salesmanship” are all
the results of personal competition. So also are slavery, war, class conflicts,
despotism, serfdom, and the exploitation of smaller nations by their more
powerful neighbors. The belief that might is right is the direct result of a
strictly business attitude towards life. The aggressive egoism of the “might is
right” leads to a variety of nervous breakdowns which preclude happiness, and
anyone who has watched the struggle for personal prestige and power in a family
or in a business office knows how disastrous the business attitude is in the
private lives of men and women. And any one who has read the history of the
world must likewise be impressed with the failure of the “ what do we get out
of it? “.
We are too prone to overlook the
terrific costs of the wrecks of competitive system to the individual and to the
state.
The competitive system in life
does not kill outright, as in the animal world, where its success is greater.
Applied to human life it maims, it cripples, it makes dependent. It breeds
crime, perversion, and insanity, the costs of which weigh heavily on victor and
victim alike. Any attitude toward life which has such an impressive list of
failures to its credit, in the history of the world, is hardly likely to lead
to individual happiness when applied to the lives of individuals. If we would
be happy in being human, we must look at our lives neither with the placid eyes
of the human vegetable nor with the greedy eyes of the aggressive, self-seeking
business man.
The third attitude toward life is
the approach of the artist.
Here the underlying
philosophy is “What can I put into it?” and the basic relation of the
individual to his fellow-men is one of co-operation and common sense.
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